Anna From Away (16 page)

She would have liked to go to Breagh’s, just talk with her about anything mundane and ordinary, but she couldn’t, not yet. Too fresh, too exposed. What would she do but sit there feeling sick and rather tawdry, Lorna on the floor at her feet, drawing pictures with her, soothing in her innocence?

That afternoon, after fog closed nearer to the house, Anna began a nude study of herself, carrying into her room the wide mirror from above the parlour bureau and setting it vertically against her table. A study of what? She looked over her naked self, at a brutal angle, catching some window, foreshortening her torso, she was all legs, and then upward, goosefleshed, startlingly pale. As honest as Dürer in those ruthless nudes of himself? Could this contrapposto arouse Livingstone again, in this quiet, grey, unforgiving light? Just what he’d thought of her body she wasn’t sure, the room had been dim, perhaps her breasts were not as firm as he was used to, her belly had more flesh now. She seemed incredibly bare in this room where, surely, no woman had stood unclothed sketching her intimate parts with scrupulous detail, her hardening nipples, the curls of her dark bush that Chet had once loved (was it thinning, just a bit?), the vague triangle of hair she scribbled in, the locus of all the fuss. And her breasts of course, more pendulous now, she was standing, not lying on her back. That Livingstone had wanted to fuck her was not much consolation after all. She was filling in too many blanks, or creating them, and she had to quit that, even though she wondered what responses she might elicit from him, what kind of play his talk would take, what he might notice, remark on, remember, dislike the day after, posed here as she was: that mattered, she knew, more than it should. She had no understanding of how he felt about her
now,
what respect remained, and the pleasure of the night itself was seeping away. Maybe mystery, fantasy, was preferable to the real thing, you could feel then as you wished.

Later, she pressed her cheek to the window’s darkness, she wanted to hear a voice from home, where taking a lover for the night would, among her friends, be forgiven, understood—as long as he didn’t belong to one of them. And after all, she was an artist.

R
ED
M
URDOCK WAS WORKING
wood again, the skates had got him going, pulled him out of that dark pit. He stood amidst a jumble of stopped work—chairs awaiting varnish, a corner cupboard without doors, a long block of pine just beginning to turn into a leg in the lathe. He had walked out of here after Rosaire’s funeral, locked the door behind him.

Frowning, he slid his palm slowly along the smooth oak grain of Livingstone’s unfinished desk. Did he know Anna Starling? Good God, it couldn’t have been him in her window.

Murdock got up a good fire in the small wood stove, a smell of resin rose out of the shavings and sawdust. On the cluttered workbench he cleared space for two boards, their lush, flowing grain deep reds and yellowy browns. Long ago his Uncle Hugh, a saltwater seaman, brought them back from Africa, he loved wood, and he’d passed these on to Murdock. Make a lasting thing out of them, Murdo, he’d said, I never got around to it. Murdock had so often caressed their surfaces, the oil of his fingers had darkened them some, polished them. But their beauty had paralyzed him too: what object was worthy of them? He could never imagine wasting a centimetre, and anticipating that first cut always tightened him up as if it were a surgical incision, and then he hesitated, postponed. But at last, a box for Rosaire. Not for jewellery—oh, how he wished to see her in the broad silver bracelets, the amber pendant, amber earrings, topaz ring, the necklace of dark pearls upon her comely skin—but for her ashes.

She’d said, You build me a box, Murdock, please. Flushed with fever, half out of her head at times. Handsome boards, she said, maybe hard maple, I like maple. You’d do the best job, Murdo, I’d love that. Brass fittings maybe, shiny. That’s all, I don’t want anything fancy. You’ll do it up nice, I know, the wood would be pretty. Sand it so smooth, like a mirror. You’ll see yourself in the lid, when it’s closed. Murdo, don’t frown, dear. I mean it, I mean all of it. The love. Lovely, lasting hardwood. Holding my ashes. You love me, don’t you? Come here, sit by me, sit. Let me touch your hands.…

Very hard was this wood, exotic, from a forest in Africa. Murdock inhaled the oily, spicy scent.

By early afternoon, working slowly, the strange, bitter aroma of their dust in his nostrils, he had the boards sawn, planed, the joints dovetailed. The ice skates sat on a wall shelf. The pond ice was all but gone, a thin rim at the edges, grey among the broken cattails. She wouldn’t skate this season, and who knew where she’d be come winter again? Even so, they were hers.

He wouldn’t tell her he had come near enough her window that Saturday night, just visiting, just stopping by, to catch her dancing in her workroom. Alone, at first. And then with a man.

On his way to the house to eat, there she was, coming up from the shore, Anna in her parka bright red against the wan spring turf of the field. She hailed him, some object in her hand, approaching quickly as if he might rush inside. She seemed not at ease, uncertain of him, as well she might be, given that cold morning she’d phoned him up. Last Saturday night, following the shore to her house, he’d hoped to make up for that, but he’d had to settle for a window look, unclear and troubling.“How are you today, Anna?” he said, offering his hand. She grasped it, returned his smile.

“A little out of breath, Murdock, is how I am.” The wind had ruffled her rich black hair, rouged her cheeks.

“What have you there?” he said.

“Look. A wooden wine goblet from the beach. You’d think it’d be beaten up but it’s not even cracked or scarred.”

Murdock turned the stemmed goblet in his hands. “Teak.” He sniffed the rim. “Odd item to wash up here. We drink more plain than that. Tipped off of a yacht, I suppose.”

“Let’s hope he didn’t fall overboard along with it,” Anna said.

“Or she,” Murdock said. “You collect things off the beach, do you?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Come inside, I’ll show you mine.”

Red Murdock conducted her through his collection of beach-combed objects. Bottles, some from the shore, others from ash pits, he had blended along a wide windowsill, shades from a bitters molasses brown rising to an old golden beer bottle, an aqua cough syrup beginning a run of blue that concluded in a cobalt jar.

“My grandfather was great for the patent medicines,” he said. “Any with alcohol.” Rosaire had laughed, surveying the glassware arranged to catch the sun, and flowers in season in the now-empty vases, columbine and lady’s mantle and early lilies, Oh, Murdock, aren’t you the bowerbird! In her own house, she’d have candles lit when he came in the evening, such a comfortable light around her.

Anna aimed at the sea a pair of German binoculars, the lenses clouded with mist. There was also a seized-up clock, its face gone but revealing a rich collection of brass gears and wheels. A carbide miner’s lamp, its brass polished, sat in the bight of a small harpoon. She picked up a large white conch.“That’s my granny’s. She’d blow that when she wanted us. It carries a long way, if you know how, we had our signals.”

“Your things are far more interesting than mine,” she said.

“These are culled. Not long since you’ve been at it, wait till summer.”

“Wait is the word, I guess. Where’s the spring, Murdock?”

“You’re in it, but once it turns, it turns quickly. Buds on the trees, if you look close. New grass just poking up in the old.”

He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a woman in. Breagh probably. “You’re in good trim again? I should have doubled back on you after your accident, but Breagh told me you were coming along and …”

“I’m fine, Murdock. You got me through the worst of it.”

She said she’d like to see his forge but he said they’d have tea first, and he laid out bannock and tinned salmon and blueberry jam from last summer, a pot of tea. She had questions, once they warmed up with each other, about the old house and its idiosyncrasies (yes, when the wind is sou’west, you get that kind of howl in the chimney, scared the hell out of me when I was a boy), about his work (I did all kinds of carpentry once, but mostly finish now, cabinets and furniture and the like), about living since birth, as he had, with the sea to his back (Oh, I was cradled here, when I woke up, when I lay down, it shaped my mind, no doubt about that. Funny though how we all like the water).

He was enjoying her there, across his table, her lively smile, her interest in what was his, in him. But Anna Starling was not a solitary woman anymore, she’d had a man in her house. Beyond this friendly acquaintance, he did not want to feel anything more for a woman. The way Rosaire died had exhausted him, she could not even speak at the end. Anna glanced at a framed picture on the wall—displayed there because in this room he did most of his living—Rosaire hugging his neck, both of them laughing. He could remember every little thing they had done that day and into the night, and what she wore, the smell of her perfume, the way she felt in his arms, the whisper of her voice.

But he only said, “She was my woman.”

“Ah,” Anna said, “she’s pretty.”

“She was,” he said, looking away.

“She was, yes.”

“Breagh is very pretty, isn’t she?” Anna said, sensing his unease.

“I’m not keen on some of her men. I’ve said so and I guess I shouldn’t.”

“Livingstone Campbell I know a little,” Anna said, carefully, wanting another take on him besides her own. “I haven’t met any others.”

“Aren’t many others.” Murdock frowned. “He’s from a good family, across the water there, St. Aubin. Related to David Livingstone, through his mother’s side.”

“The famous missionary? Stanley and all that?”

“I don’t know if that matters to him. Oh, he can play music all right, good guitar. She’ll tire of him.” Yesterday Livingstone had showed up in a new car, mud-splashed, powerful. When he stepped out of it, setting his polished cowboy boots down carefully, holding his black cowboy hat against the wind, he looked, gazing through dark sunglasses, like a man dressed for a part in a movie, and Murdock didn’t like the role. They talked, as they usually did now, coolly. Tension had grown between them, he knew Murdock didn’t think him fit for Breagh. When will that damn desk be done, Murdock, supposed to be months ago? he’d said. Fancy drawers take time, Murdock told him, they’re tricky. And why so damn big? You could sleep on that. You just finish it, Murdock, I’ll worry about what to do with it, and what I sleep on. Murdock wondered how Anna knew him, in what way.“You’ve seen him perform?” she said.

“At a dance, he’s got a little band. He was younger then, easier to like. Well, it was okay, I wasn’t struck by it. Not enough fiddle for my fancy. Little Lorna, she needs a dad, and it won’t be him. A man who can play music, you see, a woman can’t help but like him, eh? That music coming out of him, knowing it’s inside him? She thinks it might be there all the time. But no man can put music out there all the time, they forget that. No, it wears, like everything else, in the light of day. You know, she’s a smart girl altogether, but headstrong, stubborn. Not always smart about men, a little careless that way, our Breagh.”

“She’d have her choice of them, I would think.”

“Wouldn’t you? But who knows what goes into it.”

“I don’t know myself sometimes.”

“We can have a look at the forge, Anna, if that’s what you’d like. Not much to see.”

“You mean for a woman to see?”

He laughed. “I suppose I did.”

“Well, Murdock, I happen to love old iron things, how they’re made, how they look, what they’re used for. Even scrap. I do metal sculptures.”

“Don’t know as I’ve seen that.”

“Then I’ll show you. Some wonderful old stuff in my tumbledown barn. And there are pieces of an old sleigh, I think, runners with a beautiful flourish to them, parts of a seat.”

“A shame it went to ruin, I’d have saved it. My uncle raced that sleigh on the ice. His children let it rot.”

“I’ll give what’s left of it another life, if your cousins don’t mind.”

“My blessing. Who cares if they do?”

W
HATEVER SHE TOUCHED
or pointed to in the forge, Murdock explained its use. She held up a large horseshoe. “Could you spare one of these?”

“Sure, take it. There’s more in that basket. Draft horse. We always had horses, horses were the means for us, always. Even when my dad got a second-hand car finally, we still had a horse. He never used a tractor, tractors came late here if you had one at all, seems a lot of things came late to Cape Breton. The sound of horses never leaves you, you know? Horses aren’t dumb either, people say so but it isn’t true. Oh, you can make them dumb, but give them a chance. Horses, yes.”

He told Anna she could pick out other odds and ends for sculptures, most of it wouldn’t be used anymore and better it go for that. Pleased, she gathered a pile together, put what she could carry into her backpack.

“I’ll drop those heavier pieces by as soon as I can.”

He took her to his workshop, where she quickly noticed the big desk.

“That’s Livingstone’s,” he said. “Look at this.” He twisted a brass drawer pull in two directions, the hinged front dropped open and revealed a hidden compartment extending deep under the bottom. “I guess I shouldn’t have done that, it’s not a secret anymore,” but it satisfied him anyway that she knew.

“Secrets in a drawer,” Anna said. “Those are the easy ones to keep.”

“And these are for you,” he said, reaching for the skates.

“Oh, how beautiful!” she said, running her finger along a blade, the oiled stocks. “You made them?”

“For the pond, so you wouldn’t fear it anymore. Skating goes way back in time, did you know? A few thousand years ago people made skates from the bones of animals. No blades, just flat on the bottom. Skaters pushed themselves over the ice, with sticks.”

“I’d love to wear these, I would.”

“Maybe next winter. On new ice.”

She touched his hand and for a moment he thought she was going to kiss him but she stepped back. “I hope I can find a way to thank you, so thoughtful of you.”